CEOS/WGISS LIAISON REPORT
to ISO/TC 211
March 2000
(for information)
- CEOS - Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
- WGISS - Working Group on Information Systems and Services
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
Prepared by Lóránt Czárán, appointed liaison PoC.
Background info:
• Hungarian national, Romanian citizen, Norwegian resident …
• MSc. Geography, PhD. in progress
• working for UN Environment Programme / GRID-Arendal
Contact details:
P.O.B. 1602 Myrene, 4801 - Arendal, Norway
Ph. +47 370 35717, Fax +47 370 35050
e-mail [email protected]
Note: UNEP is a CEOS/WGISS Associate body, holds the
User Vice Chair position (Mick Wilson)
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
• CEOS addresses co-ordination of the satellite Earth
observation programmes of the world's government agencies
responsible for civil Earth observation (EO) satellite
programmes, along with agencies that receive and process data
acquired remotely from space
• CEOS established a Working Group on Information Systems
and Services (WGISS) in 1995, to keep pace with technological
developments related to data and information systems;
• This brought together the work of predecessors, the Working
Group on Data (WGD) and the interim Working Group on
Network Services and Systems (WGNSS)
• WGISS operates in parallel with the other CEOS Working
Group on Calibration and Validation
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
WGISS SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES:
• To stimulate, coordinate and monitor the development of the
systems and services that manage and supply the data and
information for Earth observation space missions;
• CEOS is committed to establishing ways in which
environmental data gathered by remote sensing satellites can
be made available to the widest possible audience by assisting
agencies responsible for cataloguing EO data to develop
systems for search and use;
• WGISS addresses all information systems and services
aspects ranging from data capture and processing, through to
data access and data delivery, with the underlying concept of
interoperability being a continuous thread throughout the work.
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
• WGISS is organized in Subgroups and Task Teams to address
specific aspects such as access, data handling, network
developments
• A strong interest in the work of ISO/TC211 existed within the
WGISS community; CEOS/WGISS welcomed the decision
last year to be accepted as a liaison body to the Committee.
• As standardization activities and attempts within WGISS
involve handling geographical data in general and the use of
geographical information systems, digital imagery and data
processing tools in particular, the need for close co-ordination
with other international standards bodies and especially
ISO/TC211 is seen as very important!
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
CEOS/WGISS MAIN GOALS WITH ISO/TC 211:
• ISO/TC211 drafts or outlines were also earlier circulated
among experts of WGISS and discussions were followed also
by certain contributions to the editors;
• CEOS/WGISS wishes to continue this by distributing information on all new document releases, by making drafts
available on request to colleagues in different agencies;
comments and observations then could be submitted to the
TC211 editing experts;
• Response has already been significant to this informative
initiative, with more than 40 document requests from WGISS
members over the last three months; only a small number of
comments were returned before the recent deadlines, though.
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
• CEOS/WGISS wishes to continuously participate through its
liaison person(s) appointed in the upcoming TC211 WG's and
Plenaries, to report on own internal developments as well as
report back to its members on the ISO/TC211 work
programme and the drafts developments.
• WGISS also pays increased attention to the Metadata
developments in TC211, as many of its member agencies have
extensive collections of metadata released, and standardization
is an ongoing, long and difficult process;
• CEOS/WGISS hopes to have the metadata standard released
and utilized or adopted as soon as possible by all its agencies
and associated institutions. Most of those recognize the major
need for compliance.
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
CURRENT WGISS ACTIVITIES RELATED TO ISO/TC 211:
1. TC211 WG4 is developing ISO 19119 - Geographic Information
Services. CEOS has contributed to the draft of 19119 in three ways:
a). The outline of 19119 was circulated to the CEOS/WGISS
Data Services Task Team (DSTT). Comments by the DSTT
were incorporated into the outline.
b). The DSTT is developing a Technical Note called: Service
Chaining Technology Survey. Purpose is to identify implementations that allow a user to combine geographic services, e.g.
data access, thematic classification, visualization. A draft
version of the Survey was used as a basis for development of
the next draft of 19119. (This work is also being done in
conjunction with OGC)
c). The results of the CEOS-DSTT Service Taxonomy technical
note were used as inputs to 19119.
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
2. WGISS could have a keen interest in the progress of the TC211
WG1 project 19124, on Imagery and Gridded Data Components.
Two CEOS-developed Standards were included in the preparatory
work for this work item: CEOS Catalogue Interoperability Protocol
(CIP), and the CEOS Superstructure data format.
CIP was developed within the WGISS Access Subgroup, that represents one of the few
mechanisms presently available for developing international standards for catalogue
systems and for improving the ability of such systems to share information on data
holdings.
3. Major metadata production and distribution efforts such as the
NASA-coordinated International Directory Network (DIF based),
or the EU/JRC CILS tool (CEOS Information Locator Service,
based on Dublin Core) are on-going, dynamic activities.
CEOS/WGISS, its members and associates (such as UNEP) are
also often asked by other organizations for advice and guidance on
documenting data and/or offering metadata for online searching...
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
(continued)… Efforts are made to guide towards consideration of the
upcoming ISO standard in principle, and projects such as the IDN are
already targeting future compliance.
4. WGISS could also further review and monitor the ISO 19106 draft
on Profiles. Class A Liaisons may also register profiles with TC211
based on this new standard, after approval. Different CEOS/WGISS
developments and products functional today (such as the CIP also)
could be considered for registration at that point.
5. Other relevant activities to be mentioned are the effort on EO
imagery long-term archiving standardization (Data Subgroup),
building of interfaces to the information systems of different agencies
for CIP introduction (Access SG), development of image delivery
formats and a Format Guidelines document (Data Subgroup), testing
catalogue interoperability among agencies (CINTEX TT of Access
Subgroup), monitoring SGML/XML developments (WWW TT of
Access SG).
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
CEOS/WGISS Report to ISO/TC211
CONCLUSION:
It is clear that future interaction between the two bodies could
only benefit both.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
to Mr. George Percivall (NASA)
and Mr. Richard Morris (WGISS Secretariat)
for their contributions in the preparation of this brief liaison
report.
For other details, visit
CE
S
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
Working Group on Information Systems and Serv ices
http://wgiss.ceos.org/